With the proliferation of the use of electronic documents, high speed communication, and high capacity storage technology, users routinely employ multiple repositories for storing electronic documents. Such repositories may be local to the user or remotely located and accessed via a network such as the Internet. For example, repositories may include local storage, such as a structure on a local computer hard drive or the memory of a smartphone or tablet. Other repositories may include intranetwork (e.g., within a firewall) storage, such as a document management system or network-attached storage drive. Still other types of repositories enhance mobile access to electronics, e.g., cloud-based storage, which may include repositories such as SharePoint, MS OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud, BOX, Dropbox, and Litéra Sync, among others.
Users may use multiple repositories for their own convenience and access while away or outside their internal firewall or network, or, they may save documents in cloud repositories so they can share with clients or partners (outside parties) without sending email attachments or giving them access to an intranet or extranet.
Variations between different repositories often lead to the storage of documents in multiple locations, creating difficulties for users to keep track of where particular documents are stored. Similarly, storage across multiple repositories creates challenges for controlling document versions and managing duplicates, as users may have difficulty keeping track of the storage location of particular versions or difficulty discerning whether a version stored in a particular repository is the same or different from a version stored in another repository or whether a version has been edited in one repository but not updated or synchronizes with the master copy in their document management system.
Even in instances when a user has different documents associated with a particular “matter or project” in several repositories, they need to go to multiple applications, sites, and/or screens to see all documents associated with the matter or project.
Organizations have obligations to control the storage and movement of documents and are faced with significant challenges understanding how their employees and agents are storing and sharing documents. Accordingly, there is a need for a systems and methods for managing documents across multiple repository platforms.